Production company and Final Cut Pro X plug-in creator Pixel Film Studios has released a new app today that allows you to control Final Cut Pro X with your iPad.

The app is a virtual representation of high-end film editing consoles that some professional editors use for big budget Hollywood movies, which allow them to quickly and easily edit lots of footage without working with a mouse and keyboard, but is streamlined and optimized for both Final Cut Pro X and iPad.

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PROCUTX breaks free from the menus and tabs to streamline editor tasks. This application gives users control over all the FCPX editing tools in one clean interface, eliminating the need for clicking and searching through the Final Cut Pro X menus. From import to export, PROCUTX can control every step of the FCPX editing process.

As a photographer and daily user of Aperture I sincerely hope Apple is showings its hand about their pro line. (All grumbling aside, I still like Aperture better than Lightroom. An update is needed though. Aperture X, anyone?)

I would ABSOLUTELY LOVE having a companion App for Aperture on my iPad.

Let me rate, tag and sort photos on my iPad and sync that with Aperture. That would be a dream come true. I wouldn't even need all the "heavy lifting" such as non-destrcitive editing for now.

It was possible with an App called Pixelsync but a recent change to Aperture's library architecture broke the App and it is no longer available for current versions of Aperture. The developer talked with Apple, then decided it wasn't worth trying to reinvent how Pixelsync works.

Sincerely hope Apple is doing something in that regard, or at least creates a reliable API so others can do it for them.

Pro level software goes on a different level to consumer software when it comes to pricing. $25 really isn’t that much if you need it for your work, as you can write it off against your business (if you’re self employed or run your own company).

This app looks great but I agree with 'ThunderSkunk' in wishing Apple were further along with APIs etc to really push this use case! APIs that could make great (low latency) companion apps a reality for the Mac.

This sounds like a great idea! But has FCP X gotten much better since its first release? I just ditched it and used Premiere ever since, and it does everything much better and faster than FCP X did at the time of release. Is it worth switching to FCP X at this time? I liked how it's simplified, but then I realized that you can only do about 10% of the things a video editor should do, not to mention the incompatibility of plugins…

They are not even doing a promo launch special price? Il stick with my shuttle pro, they should make this around £8 to even consider getting me to buy an app that's had no reviews!

They have to price it high because its a tightly constrained market. iPad users, who also have a Mac and also bought FCPX and also didn't bitch and moan and switch to Premiere. How many of those are there?

This looks pretty cool. But I switched to Premiere CS6 not too long after X came out. No intention of returning to the final cut suite.

I really don't get comments like these. You switched at a drop of a hat, but you have no intention of going back? Then why comment on a third party Final Cut Pro X utility that looks pretty cool and shows the strength of the platform?

What people don't understand, and it is mostly Apple's fault for the confusion, is that when Apple switched from supporting both Cocoa and Carbon developing environments to just supporting Cocoa, Apple had to rewrite Final Cut from the ground up. That is a major undertaking because Final Cut Pro 7 was huge piece of software. Apple took the same approach it did when it released OSX. It brought out a product that contained a solid foundation, but lacked many features the previous version had. Unfortunately, many of these features Pros were relying on. Apple should have foresaw this, but the way it likes secrecy sort of backfired on it.

Since the release though, Apple said it would quickly be adding features, and it temporarily put Final Cut Pro 7 back on the market. True to it's word in the fifteen months it has been out, Apple has released at least 7 significant updates. It even offers a free demo now. To each their own, but in comparison to other options, it also costs a lot less.

On the App Store, it has almost 4 out of 5 stars, which seems pretty good considering all the angry people who reviewed it when it first came out and who gave it one star (which brings the average down).

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Originally Posted by baryon

This sounds like a great idea! But has FCP X gotten much better since its first release? I just ditched it and used Premiere ever since, and it does everything much better and faster than FCP X did at the time of release. Is it worth switching to FCP X at this time? I liked how it's simplified, but then I realized that you can only do about 10% of the things a video editor should do, not to mention the incompatibility of plugins…

You might prefer Premiere, but as I already mentioned, Apple released 7 free significant updates since the first version was released. Many people who dogged the program went back and praised the updates. Lots of people liked what Final Cut Pro X brought to the table in terms of new features, they just hated the lack of relied upon features and the initial lack of backwards compatibility between projects (since addressed).

Apple obviously is serious about the program or it wouldn't be going to town on bringing in free updates adding features so quickly. It also is clearly listening to the pro community in doing so as many of the added back features are the ones pros gripped about.

This sounds like a great idea! But has FCP X gotten much better since its first release? I just ditched it and used Premiere ever since, and it does everything much better and faster than FCP X did at the time of release. Is it worth switching to FCP X at this time? I liked how it's simplified, but then I realized that you can only do about 10% of the things a video editor should do, not to mention the incompatibility of plugins…

Of topic but yes. 10.0.6 (current version is .7 but that was a minor bug fix) is a much more mature animal. Well worth taking a look at again.